A Real Taste of Chicago
Find your partner on South Oakley Street. That’s my pal Jack D’Amico on vocals (Photos by Lou Bilotti)
Like a locket that hangs close to your heart, the Oakley Festa Pasta Vino Italian Festival is timeless.
And it swings, too!
Taste of Oakley, as it is more commonly known, is my favorite summer Chicago neighborhood festival. It takes place Father’s Day weekend along the overlooked enclave of Oakley Avenue and 24th Street and incorporates superb family run restaurants like Bruna’s Ristorante, 2424 S. Oakley and La Fontanella, 2414 S. Oakley, a favorite of the late great Chicago Sun-Times food critic Pat Bruno.
There is zero hipster factor at Taste of Oakley. People are wearing black, sure, but it is all in their hair. The tradeoff is families enjoying Italian Ice and ravioli on humble city stoops. Bookings include Frank Sinatra impersonator Jack D’Amico, who appears with a trio in a salute to Tony Bennett (7 p.m. June 13) and festival organizer Ron Onesti hosting a tribute to the late crooner Jerry Vale with Johnny Maggio and Jack Miucccio and Vale video clips (7:45 p.m. June 13 on the main stage.) Vale was the first singer to have a song inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame with his 1963 recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner” that was played at Yankee Stadium.
At the trendiest Chicago festivals you will hear the Beastie Boys.
Expect lots of Jersey Boys at Taste of Oakley.
The long standing storefront restaurants and twinkling Italian lights of the Oakley neighborhood remind me of Arthur Avenue in the Little Italy section of the Bronx, N.Y.
It reminds Onesti of something much deeper.
Onesti grew up on Taylor Street, about 14 blocks north of Oakley.
His late father Alberto was a World War II veteran and a custom tailor at his father’s tailor shop, 1020 S. Western at Taylor. Onesti, 52, began his life in the same building where his father was born. His mother Gabriella is from Florence and Alberto was from Salerno near Naples, Italy. Alberto met Gabriella in Florence during World War II.
Ron Onesti
“My wife is from the Oakley neighborhood,” Onetsi said in a recent phone interview. “When I was in high school I came across that neighborhood…..
“Hello father…”
Onesti was talking while donating food to the Our Lady of Mt. Caramel Church in Melrose Park and Father Feccia of the Italian Cultural Center walked by.
Onesti stopped to spread the good word and continued, “In high school I took about 9 girls from Oakley Street to proms and dances. I happened upon those restaurants. About 10 years after that the neighborhood was going down and they wanted to establish a festival. I had been doing Italian festivals since I was 17 years old at Navy Pier and other places. The people on Oakley asked me to help them. And now this is the 24th year.”
The neighborhood is called “The Heart of Italy in the Heart of Chicago” and Bruna’s is the oldest restaurant on the strip. Bruna Cani opened the restaurant in 1933 and still features original oil-painted murals.
This weekend stop by the La Fontanella booth where owner-chef Franco Gamberale will be cheerfully dishing out arancini (rice balls), stuffed arthichokes, beef and grilled sausages.
Somehow I don’t see Grant Achatz doing this on a Saturday night in Chicago.
“The festival brings new blood to the area,” Gamberale said on Wednesday afternoon. “Otherwise people have no idea where we are at. It’s like a little island. Most of the old timers have moved out or died out. How are we going to replace them? At one time you couldn’t walk down the sidewalks of this neighborhood, but that was before the corporate honchos like Mia Franchesa and Rosebud. We don’t use steam tables. We don’t use deep fryers. We still cook the old fashioned way, everything fresh. We don’t have a frozen truck delivering anything here.”
Gamberale and his wife-chef Maria have owned La Fontanella for 28 years. The restaurant opened in 1971.
Onesti said, “It is a rare situation of the locals maintaining their ground. The (half-dozen) restaurants hanging around have a lot to do with it hanging in there. For the most part everybody who owns those restaurants lives there.”
About 20,000 people attend the three-day festival, which always concludes on Father’s Day with a special mass. (Suggested donation is $7)
“I try real hard to avoid the hipster thing,” Onesti said. “I didn’t create the feel of that neighborhood. That feel is there. I’m very specific on the vendors who come in. It’s all Italian style, but it is real good stuff–if you like that stuff.
“Being Italian-American in Chicago, the word ‘neighborhood’ is almost as close to the word ‘church’ Growing up, within walking distance of our block there was the butcher shop, the candy store, the pharmacy. Dante Peluso was the guy who owned Peruso’s Hardware Store. Bobby Botelli was ‘Bobby the Grocery Store.’ Cam’s was the restaurant on the corner, the guys from Superior Bakery at Western and Taylor. It’s always been about neighborhoods, unlocked doors and no T.V. People were out. People shared.”
These days the President of Onesti Entertainment is best known as the owner of the beautiful 900-seat Arcada Theatre in west suburban St. Charles. The Arcada is to Cialis what metal was to the Congress (in Chicago).
The 1926 St. Charles Vaudeville house features upcoming headliners like Devo (June 21), the great Johnny Rivers (Aug. 30) and ex-Runaway Lita Ford (Sept. 12).
No idea is a bad idea for Onesti.
He is forming a volunteer “Rock n’ Roll Board of Directors” that will offer ideas on how to book the Arcada. There will be a board for the musical decades of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s that will meet monthly.
“I’ll have an open bar for the meetings,” Onesti told me. “I’ll give them something to eat from the Italian side of me.”
So I could be on the 1960s board and ask Onesti to book the remaining members of the Troggs–even though lead singer Reg Presley is dead.
“Absoultely,” Onesti answered. “It is all a function of what they would want to charge. Or I might have Eric Burdon call in on the speaker phone. I had Creed Bratton at the Arcada. People said, ‘Oh, he’s that crusty old man on (the NBC-TV hit series) ‘The Office.’ I didn’t realize it, he was a friggin founding member of the Grass Roots (he played on the band’s first four albums) . I looked into it and brought him in. He came acoustically and I did it cabaret style. He did some songs, storytelling, we did a Q & A about the Grass Roots and ‘The Office.’ It was friggin’ marvelous.
“I’m trying to foster a culture that loves this music. The guy who has $10,000 worth of Armani suits but comes to my show in a Who tee-shirt.
And its been working. People bring their concerns or questions about the music to me all the time. It happened so much I decided to organize it. It doesn’t cost anything, I’m not selling them anything. It gives people a forum outside of a bar situation to talk about their love of music of a particular era. If you’re a ‘60s guy, you’re a friggin’ 60s guy. You dress like it. You got some funky hair going and a big old bushy moustache. I love the classics. The people I’ve had at the Arcada like Jerry Lewis, Mickey Rooney, Englebert. I have Ed McMahon on tape going, “Heeeeere’s Ronnny!’ I mean, who has that stuff?”
Wild thing.
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